Kevin Frandsen on Nationals Manager Matt Williams: ‘Watch Out for the Scowls’

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 31: Manager Matt Williams of the Washington Nationals works in the dugout during his team's 10-4 loss to the Phildelphia Phillies at Nationals Park on July 31, 2014 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images)

Manager Matt Williams of the Washington Nationals works in the dugout during his team's 10-4 loss to the Phildelphia Phillies at Nationals Park on July 31, 2014 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — Over the course of an MLB season, players, managers and coaches alike are bound to develop their own unique dugout routines.

Nationals bench coach Randy Knorr’s routine, for example, varies depending on whether the team’s on a winning streak or has been hot at the plate.

Like anything, sometimes the best historians are those with the closest view. In baseball, that tends to be the bench players, and for the Nationals, that’s Kevin Frandsen.

The Washington utility player went into manager Matt Williams’ dugout routines on 106.7 The Fan, in a radio interview with Grant Paulsen and Danny Rouhier on Tuesday.

“It’s a lock that you have all the managerial poses down,” Rouhier prompted. “Like you can do the, like, ‘sit on the bench’ or like the ‘legs super-crossed, hand in the back pocket.'”

“Oh, no,” Frandsen ran with the thought. “Have you ever seen, like … you put glasses on, you put like the big old Oakleys — the old-school Oakleys — on, you do ‘the lean’? You ever seen ‘the lean’? You cross your legs really tight and then you lean on one of your butt cheeks. You lean over, and then you start giving signs. That’s the old-school managerial one. You gotta be able to do it.”

“But Matt Williams has his own stroll, as every manager does,” Paulsen observed.

Frandsen was quick to correct the common misnomer that the Nationals manager is merely a ‘dugout step guy,’ with a suggestion to steer clear of Williams’ varying scowls.

Frandsen: See, everyone sees him on the top step, but he goes down to like get gum and a glass of water about like 800 times a game.

Rouhier: Do you ever give him like pop times? Like you tell him, like, ‘Dude, that was a 4.6 down there, down and back’?

Frandsen: Well you gotta watch out for the scowls, because you don’t know which one you’re gonna get. He does have serious game face all the time, I like it. I grew up watching it, you know, when he was with the Giants. So it’s like, you see it, you’re like, ‘Oh God. Alright, yea I gotcha. I’ll go the other way.’

The conversation then shifted to neighboring Baltimore, where Orioles manager Buck Showalter likes to stroll through the dugout, one hand tucked in his back pocket.

“Matt does both hands in his back pockets when he’s walking out sometimes, too,” Frandsen compared.

“Like what if someone throws him a ball?” Rouhier asked. “You know, like what’s he gonna do?”

“Chest it,” Frandsen surmised. “Like soccer.”

Frandsen — who lost his brother DJ to cancer in 2004, and later started the 19 For Life foundation to preserve his legacy — is selling t-shirts in conjunction with Cardinals pitcher Jason Motte’s “Let’s Strike Out Cancer” campaign, the proceeds from which are split to benefit Motte’s and Frandsen’s respective foundations.

“This whole thing is so close to my family,” he said. “But we have to remember that so many families – not just our family, not just a couple families, not just the baseball families – are affected by this. So many families are affected by childhood cancer, and cancer in general.”

To purchase a shirt or to donate, everything you need is in the tweet below.